In the second half of the seventh chapter of Games Wizards Play<\/i>, Nita and Kit try their best to guide Penn. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a purely superficial level: I deeply, deeply love when sanctimonious, arrogant people are taken down a notch. Like, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a trope that pleases me to no end? AND I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T JUST MEAN IN FICTION, FOR THE RECORD. When the universe swings towards justice, even just for a moment, I feel alive<\/i>. So, yes, this was a lot of fun to read because Penn is just so CERTAIN that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the best at all times. Plus, he just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to interact with Nita without being a complete asshole, as this exchange demonstrates:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why does Kit let you do so much stuff?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Let me<\/i>? Nita thought. This just gets more bizarre all the time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/i><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Penn said,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he afraid you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to get in trouble?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I hardly believe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually <\/i>concerned here. Rather, Penn swings between insulting Nita, as if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incompetent, or fearing her. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never interacted with a woman before in his life and he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deal with them without being rude or othering. So yes! The second Nita drops him into the practice universe and we finally see him act uncertain, I WAS VERY PLEASED. For once, Penn couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t act like he knew everything. In that space, he was the unknown element. He had no mastery, there was virtually no way he could be in control.<\/p>\n I did like that Nita couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be outright cruel to him, though. She feels sympathy for him and adjusts the space\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kernel to give the floor a tiled effect so that he can ground himself visually. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually quite a kind gesture, so I got the sense that while she was pleased that he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so \u00e2\u20ac\u0153overconfident\u00e2\u20ac\u009d anymore, she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him to be in pain or to suffer. Of course, it takes him NINETY SECONDS for that attitude to come back:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very nice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Penn turned slowly, assessing everything in an amused way. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kind of minimalist, I guess.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d His tone of voice suggested that as a decorating strategy, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153minimalist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had been declared to be over.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, she TRIED. Points for that???<\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no denying that Penn is talented, though. His wizardry is clean and concise; he knows what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that his technique<\/i> leaves something to be desired. His wizardry might catch the judges\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attention by itself, but what happens when he tries to talk<\/i> to them? So, it was smart of Kit and Nita to attempt to reconstruct what the judging process is going to be like. Which is hard to do because the participant DOESN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW WHO IS A JUDGE AND WHO ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T. Thus, Penn has to perform well for anyone<\/i> who comes up to him and starts to talk. And cousins, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear this is not his best quality. Look, putting aside his general attitude of arrogance, the guy speaks about his wizardry like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s SELLING CARS. Which I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect!!! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kinda funny, actually.<\/p>\n And then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not funny. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, does Penn have a PHOBIA of the sun??? Look, I was surprised as everyone else when Nita replicates a sun for them to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stand\u00e2\u20ac\u009d above. Penn freezes up, but not just because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an overwhelming thing to experience:<\/p>\n Penn was holding himself still. Anyone who couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see his face might have believed he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t longing to turn and flee out the portal. Nita saw him throw a glance at it. But then he turned his head away, scowling. Hanging on hard<\/i>, she thought. But why\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s he freaking out like this?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know!!! And it gave me an idea: what if Penn is overcompensating<\/i>? What if he acts as he does because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got this deep-seeded fear in him? What if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been anxious about other people finding out about it, so he ramps up his certainty in other situations? It kinda makes sense, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? That would mean BOTH mentees have mysteries that our heros have to deal with, and I am HERE for this.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/pceffysRzWY<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the second half of the seventh chapter of Games Wizards Play, Nita and Kit try their best to guide Penn. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[533,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games-wizards-play","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}